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The sound of water beneath the ground does not reach our ears. Yet even in moments imperceptible to human senses, vibrations travel body to body—sound already arriving before we notice it. Silence is not simply the absence of sound; it is an intentional state—either the weakening of a wave or the failure to attend to it. The sounds of countless beings living on this island have been erased over time, through histories of tragedy and the logic of tourism and development.
Holding the belief that “the sound of underground water exists” and asking “how might we hear it?”, we began by placing our bodies within the environment of water. As we encountered water soaking through layers of earth and stone, the ground of the island transformed—from a surface we stand on into a space water brushes through. Microphones and recorders, once meant to amplify the sound of flowing water, instead led us to new structures of listening. We chose to listen with our whole bodies. We guessed at the sound of the unknown. Is this really the sound of water I am hearing? We tried to attune ourselves to the rhythm of unreachable depths. Through reverberation and resonance, sound exists—any erased sound continues to echo through the traces that remain. It is time to imagine listening structures that lie below the surface, in other dimensions, apart from ourselves. Perhaps we are listening to another being’s rhythm, in another temporal zone.
Until now, water has appeared to us as something that rises from below and flows back downward—a linear temporality. But the archive of water, seeping through countless cracks, carries accidental and plural temporalities. We have never seen water before it surges. We can only speculate on the nature of surface and deep water through scientific data. To listen to water underground is to participate in its temporality, to admit we do not know its will, and still trust that our vibrations are interconnected. Imagining the ears of sand and stone, my ears witness (耳擊) the structures and networks of water that surround me in this moment. And perhaps, in that declaration of having heard the tone of water past, the mute button is finally released.
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